FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

• Libation •

Cucumber Mojito

Su Casa o ers a nice selection of sakes and specialty cocktails like the cucumber mojito, a mix of rum, fresh cucumber juice, muddled mint, simple syrup and fresh lime juice. It pairs nicely with the sushi selection—rolls fi lled with fresh fi sh. How fresh? “We get tuna from Hawaii and Tahiti, our hamachi from Japan,” Galan says. “We get orders every day or every other day. I’m always ordering.” New to the menu are hot plates with yummy ramen choices, recipes that Galan helped create. –KM

Benefi t

If you dine at Su Casa, you can also order from the Mi Casa menu if you feel like eating Mexican cuisine, too.

Shayne Galan Keeping the art of sushi alive

Where my sushi fans at?! We’re going to reveal a hidden gem of sorts, a place where the sushi is creative, fresh, dynamic, and created by room chef Shayne Galan. Head to the Silverton and fi nd Mi Casa Grill Cantina. Inside the Mexican eatery lies Su Casa, a sushi restaurant. With a few seats at the counter and a few high-top tables, you’ll want to score a seat at the counter so you can have Galan make your sushi.

“There are a lot of customers that ask me for a chef’s special or something that I can create special for them; I’m always more than happy to,” Galan says. What’s special about Galan is that he comes from the old-school way of making sushi—where tradition and proper technique matter. “What’s missing is the right way to do every step—the right way to do rice, know all the sauces, learning all the mother sauces, the right way to pair ingredients with certain fi shes during the seasons, the umami fl avors, the freshness,” he says.

Galan has been making sushi for nearly two decades, starting in his native Hawaii, where he got into the culinary fi eld right out of high school. He cut his teeth working at many restaurants across the Big Island, starting in pastry, then Pacifi c Rim-style seafood and then sushi. “It was almost zen, just watching the art of (sushi making),” he says. “I kind of fell in love with it and realized that’s what I wanted to do.”

When he moved to Las Vegas in 2014, he started working at local all-you-can-eat sushi spots, but by 2018 he helped open and create the menu for the hidden gem at Silverton. “I’m a sushi freak,” he says. “Test recipes at home. Always trying to keep up with the trends. Watch sushi chefs from Japan on YouTube every night. … I don’t feel like my job is a job. I wake up every day loving what I’m doing. It’s zen for me. It calms me. It’s relaxing. During service is like an orchestra, everything just fl ows. I love being artistic with my sushi.” –Kiko Miyasato